Rien de Rien
by Axcent
Summary: 'I don't forgive you, by the way.' Matt said. His hands were in his front pockets and he was smiling, looking at Mello's ears like he always did, never looking in anyone's eyes – Mello had almost forgotten that he did that. 'For leaving me. I'm pissed.'


Impatient, Mello decided to skip the grunt bullshit when it came to joining the Mafia. In a dim hallway, he wrestled the mouth of a handgun into the left lower quadrant of mob boss Aldo Ricci. Mello had steady hands, but he felt his eyes cross when he pulled the trigger; wallpaper curlicues blurred under the splash of blood. He could have taken a handful of hair out of Ricci's scalp and the Rolex from his wrist, a finger or an eye, but he couldn't resist the drama of taking the whole head.

Dead, a body weighs more. Mello helped it slide down the wall like a mother putting down a baby, with his arm around the back and a palm on the nape of the neck, fingers splayed into the hairline.

Odd feeling to make a deliberate cut in skin. At first the knife was impossible against the throat and wouldn't go in; it just rested harmlessly, making a dent like a wrinkle in fabric. Mello had to push to make the neck gape. Then it was so messy he regretted it – blood on his gloves, leather getting slick and slipping on the knife handle. Not a good, clean job. He was out of breath trying to separate clinging muscle.

Headless, Ricci wasn't human.

Mello put the head in a Safeway grocery bag and knotted it.

He was a moth, flickering under the swinging chandelier in the front hall of Ricci's home. Pupae in the dark hallway, winged like an angel in the light by the front door, flying away in the motorcycle, drying off in the night air. There had been a thunk when he'd rolled his shoulder to swing the grocery bag over it, the click of something sliding into place. Two roads diverging in a yellow wood and knowing how way leads on to way. He'd gone and done it, now. Metamorphosed.

Lady Macbeth had scrubbed her hands. Mello rinsed them at home while the head sat on the kitchen counter, flicked clean water from his fingers into the sink and dried them properly on a white towel.

He said nothing when he lifted the head by its crusty brown hair for the audience in Rod Ross' private room at La Puerto Roja. He'd done enough explaining at the door to get in without letting security paw at his backpack, without getting his face recorded by the cameras. He'd grit his teeth while the bouncer looked from the 21 year old driver's license and matching black credit card to his 16 year old face with open disbelief.

'Well, I'll be fucked.' Rod said, making eye contact with the severed head of his most important mortal enemy.

Mello scrunched up the Safeway bag in his hand. 'Consider it my membership fee.'

'Someone bring this kid a drink.' Rod barked at the room. 'Sit down. Tell me your name again.'

'Mello.' Mello said. He looked forward to never needing to introduce himself again. The head was taken away from him and placed on a serving plate on the table so it could be displayed like a Christmas turkey. 'I don't drink.'

'Remind me what you want, Mello.'

Mello paused, crossing his legs. It was a different room when he was sitting on the couch. 'I'd like us to be useful to each other.' He said.

'Good. But what do you want?'

'Kira.'

'Mmhm. That's right. Kira. Why Kira?'

Mello knew how to be careful with words, but he had never minced them. 'Does it matter? I can eliminate him like I eliminated Ricci. Kira is the only threat to your power, now, thanks to me,' he said.

Near had been handed subordinates with good training and salaried loyalty, and that was unfair. But while Near had been speaking softly with an amenable president, Mello had been bashing open a case even Kira hadn't cracked. Mello had shot down a criminal mastermind who had been evading Near's new FBI agents for years. This was winning. This was winning, and what did the odds fucking matter, anyway? It had always been win or lose, fuck fair. Near could have the government. Mello had the rest.

He and Rod Ross were equals before the decapitated head of the dead Don.

'Then, I'm going to celebrate.' Rod said, clinking the ice in his glass as he rose it. 'You're an official member of this family going forward. Fuck Ricci! Bastard. I smell change, Mello.'

Mello nodded slowly. His sins were piling up, and more on the horizon. Salvation would have to come with success. 'So do I.'

This was Mello's 0 day. He was bloody reborn; he'd gotten his hands dirty. Consumed from forward-facing eyes to onward-pacing feet by the competitive thrill of the takedown, he set out to do what he had to do and never hesitated. As the years hurtled by, it even started to feel right – he was a good Mafioso, plain and simple. The Family validated his cunning more satisfactorily than the Orphanage had, so he stopped thinking of himself as Motherless or Fatherless or as L's Successor and started thinking of himself as an immaculate badass with a Holy goal. He'd thought God loved him, then he questioned the existence of God. Now he'd known a God, and it had feared him.

Then he had to blow himself up and send his Family to burn in Hellfire forever. His kingdom in ruins, he crawled on his belly from the ashes of the explosion. Half of his face had been melted off like an altar candle.

He needed people around to acknowledge his efforts and his genius. Out of all the SPK members, he thought Halle was smart enough to see greatness in him, so he talked her into letting him couch surf in her upscale apartment. Hiding like a wretch behind the blue curtains, stretching his injured shoulder on the living room floor because he couldn't risk being seen at the gym, wondering what the next move would be. Every day he asked what Near was doing and every day she told him, and he contrasted it unfavourably against his crumbled accomplishments.

He was soaping up his burn scabs with individually wrapped pink antibacterial sponges early in the afternoon when the landline on the wall by the front door started to ring. Someone at the lobby door, FedEx or something – not his problem. The answering machine clicked on while he was drying off with one of Halle's good white towels.

'Hey.' Creaked the voice trying to buzz in. 'It's me. Fuck. Oops.' Jangling keys on concrete. 'It's me.'

Mello dropped the towel into the sink and ran to the phone, pulling it off the hook. 'Matt?' He asked when he meant to ask "how the fuck did you find me?" and "why the fuck would you want to?".

'Hi Mello. I was in the area. I thought I'd stop by.'

'Are you serious?'

'Yeah.'

That was such bullshit. Mello buzzed him in.

'Take your shoes off.' Mello said when he opened the door.

'Oh, yeah. Sure.' Matt dropped to one knee on Halle's grey wood floors. He was the same. Even his shirt hadn't changed. 'What happened to your face?'

'Dynamite.'

'Oh, that all?' Matt straightened in his socks. 'This is ritzy. Is there actually no television?'

'I have more important things to do, as does the owner, than watch television.'

'Like what? Jerk off?' Matt took his coat off, too, and dropped it messily on top of his boots. 'You literally never leave.'

'How long have you been watching the building?'

'There was nothing to watch; you are really boring. But I found you through CCTV and then destroyed it, which is probably what you care about.'

Wrong. Mello cared about why the Hell Matt had gone to so much effort to track and approach him after he'd left him behind in the Orphanage without saying goodbye. He couldn't think of how to ask. 'Good.' He said, and took a deep breath. Matt, again. A ghost from the past.

'I don't forgive you, by the way.' Matt said. His hands were in his front pockets and he was smiling, looking at Mello's ears like he always did, never looking in anyone's eyes – Mello had almost forgotten that he did that. 'For leaving me. I'm pissed.'

'Why the fuck are you here, then, if you hate me?' Mello blurted. Matt drew out the dumb part of him that spoke without thinking.

'Nah, I don't. You actually look really cool with your face all fucked up. Dynamite is a good reason to have a fucked up face.'

'Are you just going to stand on the welcome mat and talk shit?'

'I didn't think this through any further than that.'

Irritated but entertained, Mello pointed at the couch and watched Matt slouch over and sit down.

'Does this chick have any soda?'

'No. When did I offer you a drink?' Mello sat next to him on the sofa and rested his arms over the back.

'Are you making a move?' Matt asked, flicking Mello's forearm and looking sidelong at his chin.

'No.' Mello said.

'You always sit like you're trying to assert dominance over a bench at a bus stop.'

'I've never taken the bus.'

Matt shook his head. He leant back, so his head was on Mello's forearm. 'Do you entertain all your guests shirtless or am I special?'

'You're special.' Mello rolled his eyes.

'This is so weird.' Matt said. He crossed his arms over his stomach, started glancing around the apartment. 'You couldn't have told me you were – or, texted me? I have a cellphone.'

He could have done a lot of things. 'I don't think I'm going to have an answer that'll satisfy you, Matt. I did what I thought was right.'

'Okay. But this is cool? Now?'

'I haven't thought about it. You surprised me.'

'Think, then, Jesus.' Matt was bouncing his leg, his eyes settled on one of Mello's knees, the shine of the fabric under the lamplight.

'I didn't mean that.' Mello sighed and closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at Matt's miserable expression. 'How about you shut up and give me a chance?'

'I'll try.' Matt said in a breath that Mello felt on his cheeks – he'd leant forward. 'Tall ask, though. I might need help.'

They'd done this as teenagers. Almost exactly this, with almost the same lines. Matt put a hand on Mello's upper arm and curled into him while Mello stayed lazily put, dragging their mouths together. It was absurd that Mello could join the fucking Mafia, kill and kidnap and burn, and then makeout with Matt on a couch like none of it had ever happened. Maybe this was why he'd left Matt in the fucking Orphanage, where he goddamn belonged. He was too easy to get lost in and sitting around kissing him wasn't the fucking plan.

Mood darkening, feeling like everything was spinning wildly out of control and had been since the explosives had gone off, Mello pulled Matt's shirt from over his head and threw the goggles after it. He grabbed around Matt's back and pushed at his skin so it moved against his shoulder blades like sifting sand.

'Does your girlfriend mind?' Matt asked irrationally when Mello started sucking meanly at his neck, fingers popping open the button of his jeans.

'Really?'

'I don't know.' Matt tangled his fingers in Mello's messed up, uneven hair. The singed bits had been cut away so it feathered against his cheeks and down the nape of his neck instead of slicing a neat bob at his chin. 'I don't know, seriously, I don't know you.'

Mello tipped him onto the cushions and covered his mouth with one hand. The other was getting both of their pants off. 'You've done this, right?' He asked, when they were indecent.

'Done what?' Matt swallowed visibly. He was staring at the ceiling fan. 'Uh, well, I mean... sort of.'

'And what the fuck does sort of mean?'

'Kind of. Mostly. Partly. A bit.'

'Could you be more descriptive?' Mello laid on top of him, elbows framing his head, so Matt had to look at him... Matt looked at his shoulders, one and then the other.

'No thank you.' He was red under the freckles.

'Fuck you. What do you want, then?'

'To shut up?'

'That's what I want you to do.'

'Then I guess I want what you want.'

'Halle would mind, by the way.' Mello said, grabbing Matt's hips to make him move up the armrest a little and sliding his hand through the red pubic hair on his crotch. 'I'm supposed to be hiding out here, not fucking on the couches.'

'My bad. Didn't mean to disrupt your monotonous high-rise imprisonment against your girlfriend's wishes.' He was holding himself stiff with his shoulders up against his cheeks. 'This is awkward sober.'

'It's not awkward, you are, asshole.' Mello snapped. 'Relax for a second. I'm going to look for a condom.'

'Oh God, don't leave me naked in this fancy living room.'

Mello kissed him again before getting up to dig around in his drawer of the bathroom, only 80% sure he had anything other than a mostly empty little bottle of strawberry lube. He hadn't anticipated having anything approaching a sex life while he was running from Kira in a random woman's house. 'I don't have anything!' He shouted from the bathroom, pushing his hairbrush back and forth in a wishful fit. 'You'll have to go buy some.'

'What? Now?'

'Sometime between now and whenever we fuck.' He slammed the drawer closed.

When he walked back into the living room Matt was mostly clothed again – shirt and plaid boxers. 'Anything else you want?' he asked in a timorous voice.

'No. Take my wallet.'

'I'm buying myself a redbull.'

Mello sat unabashedly on the couch. 'Halle could be back any time after 1900.' He said.

'I know.'

Mello watched him shimmy his pants back on and pull the clunky belt tight. He still didn't really understand why Matt was there, but when he clicked the apartment door shut behind him, the silence fell like a sheet of cold rain and Mello felt like he'd been missing out on something, depriving himself, and it had just left him alone again.

Matt returned a bit out of breath like he'd taken the stairs by twos with condoms, two redbulls, a pack of smokes, and a nervous anecdote about some prick who nearly T-boned him in an intersection.

The afternoon was getting along, changing the shadows on the floor and lighting Matt's hair on fire. Mello slid his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and pulled him backwards to the couch again. 'I'm glad you're here, Matt.' He said, in the mood to say the right thing.

'Sheesh, I was just at the shops. I barely gave you time to miss me.' Matt said, and kissed him.

And he wouldn't. At 1900, he had his socks and jacket back on and was disappearing into the real world outside Halle's apartment, only to return again the next day a half hour after Halle left for work with a chocolate bar and smug smile. He started to shower at Halle's after they'd both come a time or a few while Mello straightened up the living room. He smoked a cigarette in the bathroom with the window open and the water running like he thought he was being discreet about it, yelling back and forth with Mello through the door.

When Halle came home bugged, Mello could only assume Matt had rang the doorbell and gone home confused, because he followed her to the SPK with a gun to her head and wasn't there to let him in. After resisting the temptation to blow a hole in Near's skull and showing heroic restraint in so doing, he called Matt. He knew Halle couldn't and wouldn't let him back into her home.

'1560 Broadway. Come pick me up.' He said by way of greeting.

'Ok.' Matt said. There was some banging in the background. 'I'm on my way. Sit tight.'

Mello hung up. He'd walked to a nearby McDonalds and was slouching against the wall with his hood up, the only photo of himself in existence in his pocket. He kept one finger on it to make sure it stayed put.

Matt pulled up a half hour later in a classic red car, tossed a smoke out the window into a puddle, and leant over the stick shift to swing the passenger door open. 'I bet it looks like I'm picking up a hooker.' He chuckled. Before they pulled into traffic, he banged the steering wheel a few times, like he was steeling himself.

In the darkness in the car, Mello reached out and put his hand on Matt's knee. 'Are you actually drunk?' he asked, ignoring the whore comment.

'I've had a few. Sorry I didn't plan my night around the extreme improbability of you needing me to give you a lift.'

'If we get pulled over, I will kill you.'

Matt nodded his head bouncily. 'I think I'm a good enough driver not to get pulled over, anyway.'

'I fucking hope so.'

'Plus I think I could walk a straight line if it was life or death.'

'Could you blow a 0 if I had a gun to your head?'

Matt shrugged. 'I'd sure try. Where are we going, by the way?'

'Your place.'

'Sure.' They turned around. 'Did you get kicked out or something?'

'I threatened Halle at gunpoint.'

'That seems to be a theme with you.'

'Near, too. I'm moving to Japan.'

'Great. I was just thinking I needed to move to Japan.' Matt laughed, and laughed. 'Christ. Gunpoint.'

'Yeah.'

'What were you doing all that time after you up and left me, anyway?' Matt asked, deliberately offhand.

Taken aback, Mello said, 'Nothing.'

'Seriously? C'mon...' His smile made dimples. An ironic smile. 'Doing nothing's for losers. That's all I've been doing. It can't have been worth breaking my heart for nothing.'

'Focus on the road.' He said. 'Your babbling is reminding me why I never drink.'

'Okay, okay.' Matt agreed. 'Later, then.'

'When Kira's dead, I'll tell you everything.'

'I'll hold you to that.' Matt said. 'Make it up to me, seriously.'

Matt was as good a driver as he'd said he was – smooth, law abiding. Probably better than any getaway driver Mello had employed in the Mafia. Maybe he could be an asset, after all.

'I will.'

There wasn't room to regret anything, now. Matt would have wait, as would his filthy soul and the conscience he silenced. Salvation would come with success. Confession, guilt, repentance – when the job was done, these things would come. Absolution, too.

When it was over, then he would tell Matt how fucking sorry he was.


End file.
